


fervent and necessary arrangement.

by Artemis_Crimson



Series: Find poetry in stuttering motion [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Panic Attacks, The Red War (Destiny), friendship forged in sewers, what seems to be a series of guardian oc's dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which this new world has people that might be worth dying for
Series: Find poetry in stuttering motion [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970590
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	fervent and necessary arrangement.

**Author's Note:**

> featuring HammieSlice's wonderful Pyrite

Oreikhalkos dies her first death in the crucible.  
Not her First Death, not the one that’ll make you. No one can truly know that one, no one remembers their life before except the odd Exo. But judging from the shattered shell of an escape vessel her ghost helped her out of she’d say her First Death was on impact.

She walks back to the city after that and it’s peaceful. No one is around but her and her ghost, they sleep under the stars in good weather. It’s spring, she weaves flowers into her hair and names her ghost Blossom. She walks for days and never grows cold, picks up a battered old assault rifle to hunt easy prey of birds and deer. Oreikhalkos names herself after she names her Ghost, only when they set eyes on the city.

She’s not meant to walk quietly in forest meadows though. She’s a Titan they say, made for war, to defend. The shield on which their enemies will break, the strong-arm of the law to crush them. Another Titan, taller than her and with armour she likes calls for her to come play his game. She waits politely for a fireteam to find her, jokes with them smiling in her gifted armour. She’s tossed into an earthside arena, told to hold down these areas and races ahead joyous to catch one for her new friends.

Oreikhalkos takes a sniper round to the head so much more powerful than her armour and new light it atomizes her skull and shreds of her spine are ripped out in the blast.

Blossom raises her at the same time as a warlock who yells joyfully and flicks them both finger guns while he races back into the fray. Oreikhalkos is frozen still until the brittle light shell coating her snaps and then she sobs.  
Falls to her knees.  
She stays their, head hung gasping for breath and her ghost whirls around her scanning for the problem.

She’s still there panicking when another warlock, one not from her team and tinged faintly red, slides around the corner. She sees her raise a hand full of glittering purple light. Oreikhalkos should run or fight but all she can do is flinch and burry her head, hoping it doesn’t hurt.

Nothing happens. She hears the warlock sign and dismiss her grenade with a twist of her other hand. She stows her guns away and puts her hands on her hips. She pops her helmet off revealing a white and gilded metal head with no eyes. It’s the most comforting thing she’s seen all day. She sits on a chunk of rubble and doesn’t talk to Oreikhalkos. She’ll call off her team and she’ll raise her hand in a way the Orei later will learn means I have a nova bomb ready, get out of my way. For five minutes she waits with her until the match ends. The warlock doesn’t talk when they’re transmatted back home, her team didn’t notice her absence and are high on victory.  
Oreikhalkos slinks away and hides in a city gun range for a month, paid for with glimmer she earns doing menial labour.

She probably adjusts better to the loss of light because of her fear honestly. She doesn’t even know what form her light will take or which code she’ll run with when Ghaul arrives.  
It still hurts her just like it hurt everyone else.  
It’s cold. Lonely even though Blossom is right curled next to her. She kills her first person when the city falls, she blasts Cabal chest cavities open and fills them with hot lead. With mortal strength she clears debris off civilians and ushers them to safety. For forty eight sleepless hours Oreikhalkos braves squads of monsters she’s never seen before to help people she doesn’t know.  
On the start of day three just as the world is beginning to blur and her ghost figures out how to heal her she finds a bond she recognizes. A scrap swaying from a sharp piece of rebar, it’s overlooking a hole blasted down into the city’s storm-drains, a black chasm cracked open by tower debris. A guardian, before the Light left might very well have been raised following a fall like that. She weighs the odds and jumps in without looking.

Oreikhalkos picks her way through, she and her ghost light the way scant feet ahead with glowing eyes. Time is strange in the dark but eventually reflection catches her attention. It’s bronze and white plastic glare. She stumbles running towards it. Calling as loud as she dares.

“Are you alright? I was a guardian, I’m here to help.”

The shimmer groans, then wakes up, “Down here, what happened?” Oreikhalkos tries to explain, what she knows is spotty from tower personal she saved and her own hazy vision, still she manages the gist of it in between introductions.  
Her name is Pyrite-50, exo warlock. She introduces herself with the same steady pace as a parade march (Oreikhalkos doesn’t know how she knows that).  
When she tries to say she used to be a titan Pyrite tells her sturdy as can be that she’ll always be one light or no. Pyrite has been down here waging guerrilla hell on the red legion but hasn’t been to the surface since the fall. They work together to dismantle the barricade she built to help keep off the Incendiors that were sent down here to clean it out.  
When it's done Pyrite just brushes herself off and asks Orei to help her find her missing ghost.  
She makes several decisive turns and finds her ghost, Cherri scanning the tunnels for places to plant explosives.  
She even knows the best way out of the city too, they reach the gate at dawn.  
They’re slowed by the amount of cabal they ambush but make it one piece. Oreikhalkos decides right then and there as sure as the sun.  
She’s following Pyrite, and she will not die a Final Death.

**Author's Note:**

> Orei's title comes from the poem Sometimes by Mary Oliver


End file.
